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Inside Facebook

Inside Facebook

Facebook to introduce sponsored results in search typeahead

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 04:56 PM PDT

Facebook is testing new “Sponsored Results” ads that will allow advertisers to promote their business in the social network’s drop-down search results, according to TechCrunch.

Rather than broad keywords, advertisers will bid against specific pages, apps or places, TechCrunch says. This will be in addition to Facebook’s other demographic and interest targeting, which could make the ad units particularly powerful and a major new source of revenue for the social network.

Facebook, however, has not offered statistics or information about the use of its search feature so it’s unclear how most people use the product. It is likely that users search most often for their friends and pages or apps they are already connected to, so Sponsored Results might come across as irrelevant. But if people begin to use Facebook search to find things they want more information about, as they do on Google, advertisers and users could find more value in the product. Sponsored Results appear in similar format as organic results, though they seem to include the word “sponsored” and a brief message from the advertiser, based on screenshots provided to TechCrunch.

As we wrote about last month, Facebook recently updated its search bar to include the words, “search for people, places and things.” At the time we wondered if the change was part of some preliminary movements toward one day introducing search-based ads, and today’s news is confirmation of that. [Update 7/19/12 5:25 p.m. PT - Facebook's official statement about the news: "We are currently testing a feature that surfaces sponsored results along with the organic results when people are looking for things on Facebook. We try to show people apps and pages they'll be most interested in."]

Earlier this week we discovered a section in Facebook’s Help Center referring to “New Search,” though it’s unclear whether this is related to Sponsored Results or legacy wording related to a past change to search.

More to come as we get details about Sponsored Results.

SimCity Social, Spotify, SongPop, TripAdvisor, Instagram and more on this week’s top growing apps by DAU

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 04:02 PM PDT

SimCity Social came in as No. 1 on our list of top growing Facebook apps by daily active users this week, doubling its DAU.

Titles on our list gained the most DAU of any apps on the platform, growing from between 440,000 and 2.5 million DAU, based on our AppData tracking service.

Top Gainers This Week

Name MAU Gain Gain %
1.  SimCity Social 5,800,000 +2,500,000 + 100%
2.  Spotify 24,800,000 +2,400,000 + 11%
3.  SongPop 9,400,000 +1,300,000 + 19%
4.  Dragon City 4,900,000 +1,100,000 + 29%
5.  TripAdvisor™ 37,000,000 +900,000 + 2%
6.  Instagram 23,400,000 +900,000 + 4%
7.  Static HTML Iframe Tab 3,900,000 +800,000 + 26%
8.  Chill 13,600,000 +800,000 + 6%
9.  Texas HoldEm Poker 34,800,000 +800,000 + 3%
10.  HTML Page Tab #8 1,700,000 +700,000 + 70%
11.  Conheça novas pessoas 6,100,000 +700,000 + 13%
12.  Glassdoor 5,600,000 +700,000 + 17%
13.  Zoosk 11,400,000 +700,000 + 8%
14.  Static HTML Iframe Tab : Custom Icons 4,900,000 +600,000 + 14%
15.  Diamond Dash 17,000,000 +600,000 + 4%
16.  HTML Page Tab #10 2,200,000 +500,000 + 29%
17.  HTML Page Tab #6 2,100,000 +500,000 + 31%
18.  HTML Page Tab #9 2,600,000 +500,000 + 24%
19.  Pinterest 15,300,000 +500,000 + 4%
20.  Custom Tab | Arrow #3 870,000 +440,000 + 102%
No. 2 Spotify is back on the rise after a slump earlier this month. No. 3 SongPop keeps growing. The name-that-tune app could reach 10 million MAU later this week.
Most of the apps on our list this week appear regularly in the charts, though canvas-based quiz app No. 11 Conheça novas pessoas is a recent addition. There are also a number of Woobox customizable HTML tab applications that have experienced sharp growth.
All data in this post comes from our traffic tracking service, AppData. Stay tuned for our look at the top emerging apps on Friday.

Xbox, EA Sports, Gamestop, and Lego among others in this week’s most talked about pages in games and toys

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 03:14 PM PDT

Xbox leads this week as the page gaining the most People Talking About This among the games and toys category.

Other top gainers for the week are EA Sports’s recently released NCAA Football 2013 and popular video games retailer, Gamestop.

The top 10 pages gaining People Talking About This saw increases between about 37,000 and over 215,000 engagements. We compile this list with our PageData tool, which tracks page growth across Facebook.

# Name People Talking About Daily Growth Weekly Growth 
1   Xbox 373,898 0 +219,639
2   EA Sports NCAA Football 214,433 0 +113,792
3   GameStop 202,529 0 +104,769
4   League of Legends 226,283 0 +79,051
5   LEGO 71,348 0 +60,725
6   Playtime Anytime 64,660 0 +58,968
7   Halo 4 90,469 0 +46,494
8   ThinkGeek 132,445 0 +45,486
9   Point Blank Thailand (Of… 43,765 0 +37,394
10   Sonic The Hedgehog 58,172 0 +37,387

Riding the coattails of San Diego Comic Con, Xbox saw the majority of its engagement generated from a photo album posted on July 18th. The album received 10,817 likes while the photos, many featuring celebrities, each generated decent engagement; the most receiving 677 likes and  162 shares. One of the games they were heavily promoting during the event, Halo 4, is actually the No. 7 top gaining page for this week.

As it can be seen in green in the graph below, the page jumped from 160,000 PTAT all the way to over 370,000 PTAT. Instead of using a single photo, the tactic of using an entire album allowed the page to see more engagement from a one post. It is also interesting to see that the page has not seen a significant increase in new Likes per day, but such a rapid growth in PTAT. It can be assumed that this engagement did not come from ads, but organically from many the page’s 18 million fans.

With its newest game released this week, EA Sports NCAA Football saw a large growth in engagement through its use of Facebook Questions. The questions have been simple polls relevant to the game and the audience. One of the questions, seen below, saw over 70,000 votes. Because other, similar questions do not see this much engagement, it could be possible that EA Sports ran page post ads encouraging users to vote in the poll. The question might have also gone viral on its own.

 

ShareThis brings social reader functionality to new sharing widget for publishers

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 12:34 PM PDT

ShareThis today announced a new tool that will allow publishers to turn their sites into social readers without having to build their own custom Facebook applications.

ShareThis is known for creating widgets that are used across more than 1.4 million websites to make it easy visitors to share content to their social networks. With the new ShareNow feature, publishers can take advantage of Facebook Open Graph and give visitors the option to automatically share their reading activity back to Facebook. This could lead more blogs and media sites to add social reader functionality that could drive additional traffic and awareness for their content. At the same time, Facebook will benefit from the additional data that can then be used to target ads.

When users visit a page with ShareNow, they have the option to login with Facebook and grant the app permission to post to Timeline. The widget remains present when users scroll down the page. Users can easily turn automatic sharing on and off, or remove activity that they didn't mean to share. Once users authorize the app on one site, they do not have to re-add the app when they visit another site also using ShareNow. However, by default, the widget will be disabled on all other sites until users switch sharing to “on."

The tool will be useful for publishers that aren't experienced in Facebook app development. Facebook has its own social reader plugin called "Social Recommendations Bar" in beta that some sites like Mashable are testing.

Facebook testing new Pinterest-inspired design for app stories in News Feed

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 11:28 AM PDT

Facebook appears to be testing a layout for Open Graph app stories that is similar in design to Pinterest, with boxes for individual items that allow Likes, comments and other app-specific actions.

The change makes app stories even more prominent in News Feed. Developers could benefit from the larger photos, captions and additional options for users’ friends to engage with app content.

Clicking on a photo takes users to the third-party app page or website. When users hover over a photo, they have the option to comment on the item, which wasn’t available in the old layout. Also on hover, users can take in-app actions without leaving Facebook if the app has created custom action links.

For example, in the case of the Foodspotting app, users can “want a dish” directly from News Feed.

It’s unclear how widely this change has been rolled out or if it is simply an early test. We’re looking into whether the design applies to all Open Graph stories, from games and other apps, or if it only appears when apps share multiple photos. Either way, the layout is likely to remind users of Pinterest. Although we can’t say for sure whether Facebook’s designers were thinking about Pinterest when they came up with this, we’ve previously suggested that Facebook might take some design cues from the social bookmarking site since it has quickly risen in popularity. The latest News Feed change coincidentally also applies to stories from Pinterest itself since the site integrates Open Graph.

This is what Pinterest stories looked like in News Feed before the change:

We’ve reached out to Facebook for more information.

[Update 7/19/12 2:48 p.m. - Facebook provided the following comment, "We're always testing new Platform features, but we have nothing further to announce."]

Facebook bug leads Lululemon and more pages to post fake offers; other pages can’t create offers at all

Posted: 19 Jul 2012 09:54 AM PDT

A bug affecting Facebook pages, including several of Lululemon Athletica's local pages, posted empty offers without the admins' knowledge last week.

We've heard from a number of page owners that experienced this issue and several others that have the opposite problem: they can't post offers to their page at all. As is commonly the case, there has been little communication from Facebook about the problems and page owners have been turning to Facebook groups and community forums to find out what to do. There are often dozens of bugs affecting different groups of users at any given time, but this one has been more than an inconvenience. For some, it has appeared damaging to their brand.

When fake offers were posted to certain fan pages last week, many admins thought their accounts had been hacked. Users were able to claim the offers, but the coupon they received via email turned out to be blank. Only after the Lululemon offers went viral did the company learn that the problem was the result of a bug in Facebook's system. Facebook tells us it has removed the accidentally posted offers and sent an email explaining the issue to users who tried to claim them. However, some fans seem to be more upset with the businesses than Facebook.

Logan Ayliffe, who manages social media for French Broad Chocolates, says the company's Ashville, N.C. store had to put up signs about the issue after fielding Facebook comments and phone calls from frustrated customers.

In a public Help Center thread about problems with Facebook offers, Ayliffe wrote, "I’ve spent the better part of two years building trust with my audience, never with the hard sell, always with the non-marketing-sounding culture building, always with the giveaways. And in one shitty bug, Facebook ate a chunk of that trust."

He says he wanted to make up for the mistake by posting a legitimate offer to the page, but encountered another bug that initially prevented him from doing so. It seems that since Facebook introduced the "voice" feature for page owners to choose whether to post to their page as themselves or their brand, some admins have been unable to make offers. Facebook has not addressed the issue, but some users discovered that switching back and forth between their own voice and the voice of the page solves the problem.

Offers still haven’t rolled out to all business pages, though they were announced in February. Bugs like these might be part of the reason for the delay.

Page owners who are experiencing issues with offers can contribute to the Help Center thread here.

fredag den 20. juli 2012 at 07.49